Passenger transportation seats, such as airline seats and train seats, are continually becoming more complex, and consequently heavier, particularly in the higher class seating areas such as First and Business Class accommodations. Seats now include such additional amenities as entertainment systems, Internet access, and long-range sleeper or signature features. Some of these seat assemblies including multiple seats may weigh over 500 pounds.
As the weights of seat assemblies increase, traditional methods of handling and installing seats have become cumbersome, more difficult, and a physical risk to the operators. Additionally, in confined spaces, such as airline cabins, handling and installing these heavy seats are complicated by restrictions on operator movement. Traditional methods of manual seat handling and installation are no longer practical.
Presently a crew of as many as four operators may be required to lift and maneuver a seat assembly, usually using lifting straps to improve lifting posture. However, even with lifting straps, it is impractical to manually lift these heavy seats. At every stage in a traditional process, lifting the seat assembly can be a difficultly to these operators' ability to install the seats. When seats arrive on shipping foundations, such as pallets, platforms, skids, and skates, manual lifting is required to remove the seats from the shipping foundations, transport the seats into a passenger cabin, possibly with the use of a seat cart, and lift the seats onto the vehicle floor for installation. During the process, operators have to hold a seat up while another operator maneuvers a seat cart into a position below the seat assembly or removes a seat cart from below a seat assembly. Similarly, operators are required to lift and lower seat assemblies into position for installation, often in awkward positions. Carrying a large and heavy seat assembly through a narrow doorway can be exceptionally difficult, and carrying a large and heavy seat assembly over workspace obstacles even as small as a surface transition can present a dangerous potential for operator injury from tripping or stumbling while supporting at least part of the weight of a seat assembly.
The constrained spaces of an airline compartment, particularly restricted overhead spaces such as under stow bins and interior walls that rapidly slope inward at the side of a cabin, cause this process to be even more difficult, especially for heavier seat assemblies. As shown in FIG. 1, up to 74 inches of vertical working space may be available in the center of the aircraft, under the center stow bins, but as little as 64 inches or less may be available under the outboard stow bins, on the seat assembly centerline. Of this space, most is consumed by seats with seat backs often being 44 inches or taller as installed. The back of a seat loaded on a seat cart for transportation may be 53 inches or more off the floor given the height of the seat cart deck. Because of stow bins and cabin accessories, there may be as little as 10 inches of vertical space remaining to lift a seat assembly on or off a seat cart and to properly position the seat assembly. The additional and improved amenities for First and Business Class accommodations such as entertainment systems and Internet access that are attached to the seat frames below the seats may prevent operators from lifting these seats from the bottom.
Therefore, with increasing weights and complexities of passenger transportation seat assemblies, a system and method to easily handle, install, and remove seat assemblies is needed. The ability for a single operator or limited number of operators to lift and remove a seat for inspection or modification is particularly useful now that ever more complicated electronics packages are being incorporated into seats along with supporting cables through and along the aircraft floor, all of which may require that seats be lifted for access prior to removal for repair or upgrades.